National Apprenticeship Week – A Year in Review

Posted 07/02/2024

As part of National Apprenticeship Week, we're looking back over the past year on successes across our programmes and we look forward to plans for the future in relation to learning and skills.

Over 2022/23, Unity Works programmes supported 80 trainees, 100+ ACL learners and 297 people across supported employment.

Across our learning and skills programme we supported:

  • 3 individuals on our accessible apprentice programme to complete their NVQs
  • 7 trainees to progress towards or have completed their NVQs.

Across the organisation, we have been exploring ways to support and evidence the skills trainees develop in our social enterprises that demonstrate their applied numeracy and literacy skills- for example, following recipes and helping with stock taking, handling money, and helping prepare for catered events, all of which are tasks where we embed development of these functional skills. Watch this space to see what qualifications and training we develop to help our trainees and learners build up their CVs and work towards their employment goals!

Supported Internships

Supported Internships have continued to grow with Unity Works currently delivering three programmes with DFN Project Search. While excellent programmes which have facilitated some fantastic skill development for both their interns and the host employers, these number tend to be small, and employment outcomes following the programme are not guaranteed.

Our Awards

Although Unity Works’ own accessible apprentice programme is currently on hold, we celebrated the graduation of our 2022/2023 cohort alongside our trainees and jobseekers in October 2023. Our three apprentices each achieved their NVQs and are now progressing into the next steps of their employment journeys. Find out more about one of their journeys here.

The future

Unity Works is currently working with Meganexus Ltd. to build an accessible learning portal for our trainees, learners, apprentices, and jobseekers to manage their action plans, certificates, and CVs with us. This portal will also enable us to build a strong evidence base of engagement and progression, and thus help us to continue making the case for accessible vocational programmes and accessible apprenticeships.

We are keen to talk to training providers and employers about their accessibility and our employer engagement team is always happy to speak to businesses about their training needs and how they can offer opportunities to the people we support.

We also look forward to continuing to develop our learning and skills offer, with our ACL programmes and the courses we offer our trainees.

Do follow us on social media for news and updates and reach out to our Learning & Skills Manager Suzanne Thomson at [email protected] if you have any queries, referrals or suggestions.